


but clouds got in my way

by Bartonfink



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Gore, PTSD, Rook wants to fix everything and everyone and he's very upset he can't :(, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 05:12:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14465772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bartonfink/pseuds/Bartonfink
Summary: Staci's in pain.Rook doesn't know how to fix it.~Insight into the relationship between Staci Pratt and the Deputy prior to Hope Valley and following the liberation of the Whitetail Mountains.





	but clouds got in my way

Adam knows it’s different with Staci.

When he’d found Hudson and Whitehorse, they’d been shaken. They’d gripped his arm tightly and looked at him like they were seeing the face of God (bittersweet irony, he thought, as he liberated them, told them everything was going to be alright). But then they’d smiled. God, they were so happy to see him again.

But Staci?

The way he looks straight past him, over his shoulder, as if he’s expecting Jacob to appear in the doorway any second. When he doesn’t come, Staci laughs, dangerous and cold and manic, his whole body shaking like he’s on the verge of falling apart. He flinches at Adam’s touch and shakes his head, silent remission. The way he wields a bat with more power than he’d ever shown at the precinct softball tournament.

Adam knows it’s different.

Staci’s different.

The whole fucking world’s different now.

 

* * *

 

 

All those hours whiled away together on patrol picking up teenagers for spraying graffiti and helping old ladies find their house keys. All those after-work beers, games of pool that Staci let Adam win, knowing looks exchanged during another epic Whitehorse lecture about correct arrest techniques. Staci might have been his older brother’s friend growing up, but once Adam joined the force, there was no questioning the shift.

Staci never brought up the crash, which Adam once drunkenly thanked him for, causing Pratt to blush and changed the subject. True though. He didn’t need another reminder of what dragged him back to Montana, didn’t need to think about identifying the bodies or arranging three funerals, or endless meetings with lawyers who tried to look sympathetic with dollar signs in their eyes. The military wouldn’t take him back – honourable discharge – but Whitehorse couldn’t turn the kid down. Not when they’d fished his family out the ravine six months earlier.

“Rookie” is Staci’s nickname of choice, bestowed out of fondness. Out of some protective instinct to keep the last McKenna boy a kid forever, even now he’s 6’3 with high cheekbones and a chiseled jaw, perpetual five o’clock shadow and biceps that have him disqualified almost immediately from Hudson’s inter-office arm wrestling bracket. The only remnants of his youth are things that Staci Pratt pretends he hasn’t noticed: his full, pouty lips, the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, his green eyes and thick, dark lashes. Everyone sees Will in Adam’s eyes.

(Not Staci, because Staci knows Will’s eyes were more hazel, but he thinks better of correcting people when they say it.)

How the fuck do you compete with a dead man, anyway?

 

* * *

 

With Tammy still aching from what Jacob made him do, Adam thinks better of staying at the Wolf’s Den permanently. Doesn’t fancy the prying eyes of Whitehorse at the jail, or the whole of Fall’s End curiously watching his every move. Dutch offers him the bunker, but Adam declines.

“You sure kid? Safety in numbers.”

He hums something like a consideration.

They drive. Keeping driving for a long time.

The bright morning turns into a beautiful afternoon, and Staci’s sitting in the passenger seat of the borrowed truck. One hand out of the window, fingers flexing in the breeze. His eyes are closed, chest rising and falling softly in the calm that sits between them. No radio, just the purr of the engine and the sound of tires rolling against asphalt. The baseball cap he’s wearing casts a shadow on his face, hiding the bruises, hiding the cut across the bridge of his nose. More bandages concealed beneath the ill-fitting flannel shirt and cargo pants. Whatever Jacob did, he doesn’t want to talk about it, and Adam’s not sure he wants to know.

Eventually they find a place to call their own. Some long-abandoned house on the edge of the mountain wilderness, mercifully devoid of any indication the occupants were removed by force. Some old cans in the cupboard. Generator still works. This is enough, Adam thinks, as Staci sits awkwardly on the sofa, and his muscles seem to visibly relax against the chintzy floral pattern.

This is home for now.

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn’t want to leave Staci alone, but he’s out like a light, sprawled across the queen bed in the master bedroom. He doesn’t stir when Adam closes the front door.

At least hunting makes him feel normal again.

Reminds him of long summer evenings out back home, looking for deer and rabbits, poised quietly in the long grass with his finger steady on the trigger of Dad’s second-best rifle.

He’d inherited the first-best one after the crash.

In the woods he doesn’t have his Daddy’s gun. He’s got a compound bow, and that’s a blessing. Two quick shots take the doe down.

She’s dying when he catches up with her, staring up glassy-eyed, breathing heavy, straining against the moss and dirt.

“Shh, girl,” he whispers as he crouches by her side. “It’s okay.”

And maybe that’s not a lie, because a quick death is a mercy in Hope County, and he slits her throat in one swift motion, watching as crimson blood stains the ground, stains his hands and wrists. Warm and salty and syrupy. A feast for the worms. They’ll all be worm food soon.

The birds are singing in the forest canopy, oblivious.

 

* * *

 

 

Staci wakes up screaming.

He did it at the Wolf’s Den too, so Adam isn’t surprised, but he still drops the ladle to the floor in his haste to get into the bedroom. Wide-eyed, sweating, terrified as he backs further up against the wall, like he’s trying to disappear through it.

Staci’s different.

“I saw him, I saw him, he was right here,” he sobs. His nails are bleeding where he’s dug them into the plaster, leaving perfect indentations in the wallpaper. He looks wild when he rounds on Adam, shaking the words out of his mouth. “Are you sure? Do you swear to me?”

A nod.

“I put a bullet between his eyes myself, Stace.”

Maybe this is the way it is now. Maybe terror is all they know.

Staci softens slightly, sliding down the wall to sit with his head in his hands, knees drawn up to his chest.

“He’s in my head,” he whispers. “I can’t get him out.”

Adam approaches him with the same delicacy he’d approached the deer currently butchered and partially simmering on the stove.

“I know,” he whispered back, as he cups Staci’s jaw with his damaged hands and smooths his thumbs over his stubble-rough cheeks.

He wants to say everything’s going to be okay, but he doesn’t think he can lie to Staci anymore.

Staci looks up at him, something unknowable in his brown eyes, and his heart is beating so fast Adam swears it’s trying to jump out of his chest.

Adam feels ashamed because he doesn’t know what to say. What to do. He looks away, and releases Staci from his grasp, standing up again.

“I made dinner,” he mumbles, as he retreats to the safety of the kitchen.

 

* * *

 

 

He throws up most of his stew later that night, narrowly missing the peeling teal paint of the porch. The chunks of carrot and lumps of meat mixed with stomach acid look up at him accusingly from the ground and he wipes his mouth on his shirt, reaching for the bottle of whiskey that had caused the problem in the first place.

He gave Staci the last of his Ambien, and now he’s jonesing for a cigarette, but he hasn’t seen a pack in weeks.

He drinks.

And drinks.

Until the bottle’s empty and his vision’s blurry, too blurry to stargaze anymore, to pick out the constellations in the cloudless night sky.

He lurches back inside and collapses onto the couch.

“We’re all gonna die,” he murmurs into the cushions and laughs, or sobs.

And what does it matter anymore?

**Author's Note:**

> I might write more of this, idk. I just wanted to try something new!


End file.
